


Moon down

by Verse



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Pre-Canon, Werewolf AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 09:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14912648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verse/pseuds/Verse
Summary: Sam owes Hannah more than she'll ever be able to put into words. (She wishes she'd tried to thank her properly while she could.)





	Moon down

**Author's Note:**

> Getting around posting old stuff  
> P sure this is from 2015 so forgive the odd writing style

Sam is five when she starts climbing.

She’s the pride of her parents, and she knows it. They show her the ropes, the ties, teach her how to do them. They don’t let her climb on her own already, of course- she’s too young. That doesn’t stop her from scaling easier and shorter walls her parents by her side, though.

Sam is five and she is happy.

* * *

Sam is seven and her arm hurt. 

She doesn’t understand- she was just trying to be nice to the doggy! why did he bite her?

Sam’s parents bandage the bite with smiles. It was probably scared, they tell her. She should be more careful with unknown dogs, they tell her. They’re like people. They get wary in front of what they don’t know.

* * *

Sam is seven and she doesn’t understand.

The bite doesn’t hurt anymore- and yet her parents keep bringing her to doctors -and vets?- for reasons she can't grasp. Granted, the docs don’t seem to understand either.

Her parents are acting weird too- more careful, sweeter- but avoiding all physical contacts with her. They don’t hug her anymore. They don’t kiss her goodnight anymore.

And they close the door and keep the key at night.

Sam hates the night.

* * *

Sam is ten when her parents finally tell her.

Everything suddenly makes sense 

Her abnormal feeling of loneliness, her cravings to go in nature, her frustration at the lack of meat in her parents’ vegan diet (not that she  _wants_ to eat a dead animal) her attraction to the moon, her urges to bite things

Her parents reluctance to touch her, the vets, the closed door, the constant supervision, the wary looks

Sam’s parents are just like that dog that bit her, she thinks. Scared of what they don’t know, and hurting her in the process.

* * *

Sam is sixteen when she finally talks her parents into sending her away.

She knows they love her. But staying with them is  _suffocating_. She  _needs_  freedom and exercises and social contacts and her parents has granted her only the strict minimum of those during the past few years.

If she stay with them any longer, she might die.

She doesn’t know if she imagined the relief in their eyes when she stepped in the bus, but she's not sure she cares anymore.

* * *

Sam’s roommate is absolutely  _lovely_. She shows her the campus, present her to her sister and brother, doesn’t point out if Sam slip up and does something weird, and they overall have a very pleasant time.

If that’s what having a friend is like, Sam thinks, she hopes she’ll become her’s.

* * *

She does.

* * *

_Hannah saw her._

Sam is hiding in the bathroom, knees clutched against her chest, breathing heavily, because  _Hannah saw her._

It’d only been awkward at first. They were talking, the Washingtons siblings all together, when it hit Sam like a truck, like that moment when you realize that your period started. With limited time and rising panic, Sam had made up a stupid excuse and all but ran away from her friends to lock herself in the bathroom.

But she hadn’t expected Hannah to follow her.

Hannah only opened the door for a second. A second during which Sam was not quite human anymore - growing snout, growing ears, growing fur.

But that wasn’t the worst. Oh, no, that wasn’t.

There is blood under Sam’s nails- and she didn’t get hurt.

Hannah saw her.

_And she hurt Hannah.  
_

* * *

“Sam?”

The voice behind the bathroom door is quiet, hesitant. Sam doesn’t answer.

“Sam, if you’re in there- I mean, really you, please, I beg you, open the door, I beg you…”

Sam hesitates -what if, what if Hannah rejects her, what if Hannah calls the police or the vet, or her parents, what if she has to change roommate, what if-

She opens the door.

The two girls stare at each others. There’s a recent bandage around Hannah’s hips, Sam notices. Guilt fuel her throat- god, she just wants to throw up-

Hannah throws her arms around her and start sobbing.

“Oh my god, Sam, I was so worried! I’m so glad you’re okay- you’re okay right? Are you hurt anywhere? You’re a mess- show me where you’re hurt-”

Sam doesn’t know how to react, because she hadn’t been hugged in years, hasn’t been touched, hasn’t been worried for in- she doesn’t even remember.

“I-I’m okay, Hannah. I’m okay.”

She has no shame admitting she starts crying then.

* * *

Hannah, as it turns out, is pretty chill with the whole werewolf thing.

“Don’t be silly. We’re friends, right?”

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t remember having any other friends. She doesn’t know how are friends supposed to act.

As it further turns out, Hannah is not only chill, but she wants to help.

“I mean, there are probably side effects other than just changing every full moon right? And maybe there are ways to control your transformation or something.”

And thus began the long and boring information hunt.

Okay, maybe not so long. And maybe not so boring.

Hannah has more friends than just Sam. In fact, if you put together all her friends, all of Beth’s friends, and all of Josh’s friends, she’s pretty sure you could make a small mafia with them.

Point is, Hannah’s brother’s bro’s friend is a real bookworm and happen to know how to pretty easily find what you’re looking for in the library. Books about wolves, supernatural stories, they all ended up up in Hannah’s hands in no times.

* * *

It also gave Sam the opportunity to meet a couple of Hannah’s friends.

Ashley, Sam’s decide, is a sweety. After a heated debate on wither or not White Fangs was a good book, they even end up trading numbers. Call me if you ever want to study or hang out, she says. Sam accepts gladly.

Chris is a different story. Because the moment Sam sees him Sam is in love.

Not a romantic in-love. Not even a friendship in-love. It’s something from deeper inside, something screaming _I’ll protect you,_  something similar to what she feels toward the Washingtons, something that makes him immediately part of her small group of people she likes.

 _Pack_ , she’ll later name it. He’s part of her pack.

* * *

Going through all the books is a giant trial-and-error game they aren’t even sure has an end. They write down everything they find, and when they get tired to read, test if they’re a thing.

Sam’s senses  _are_ indeed better than normal humans -something she’d never really noticed better. She does have a couple habits and likes humans don’t here and there -biting, feeling grass under her bare feet- but that’s nothing new.

When they discover that aconite, also known as wolfbane, is a plant that was said to control werewolves, they decide to try it out.

* * *

It works.

Sam is confused -her body is much lower than usual, and she has to walk on all four- but mainly she is conscious of what she is doing. It’s really her, the wolf, instead of some beast ruled only by instinct.

Hannah and her cheer with lot of petting.

* * *

It doesn’t occur either of them that Sam may be able to shapeshift until  _that_  day.

Sam and Hannah are talking, walking to their next class, when some jerk corner them and start insulting them.

That in itself isn’t a problem- Sam had her fair share of idiots in her life, and it was the kind that was all bark and no bite. They could just slip next to him and he’d be too baffled to notice.

No- what makes Sam’s blood boil is that he cornered Hannah too.

_Don’t approach her. Don’t talk to her. Don’t touch her. Don’t don’t **get away**_

The boy raises his voice, apparently offended that neither of them gives seems impressed.

Sam sees red.

She knows Hannah is hugging her, whispering things she cannot hear over the blood pounding in her ears. The only thing that matter to Sam is that _he could have hurt her no no Hannah’s the leader protect Hannah keep her safe keep her safe_

She follows Hannah, though, when she orders her to.

And way later, when Sam is finally calm and Hannah’s hands stopped shaking, they’d notice that with her small nails there was absolutely no way Sam could have scratched him that deeply.

* * *

Voluntarily shapeshifting isn’t easy. Most of Sam’s efforts don’t lead anywhere at the beginning.

She can’t go full wolf when it’s not the full moon, she discovers quickly. She can, however, tip her body to a more animal-like form, you could say. Grow some claws for a minute. Turn her full hand for another. It’s tiring, hard, and it only works for limited period of time, but if she really had to, she knows she could do it.

* * *

Sam meets new people -Some she likes, Jess, Matt, some she likes less, Mike, Emily. But even if some of them don’t become part of her pack, she feels like they’re still close from entering- and a really small thing could make them all part of the group.

* * *

The Washingtons decide to throw a big, big party in the mountain this year. Hannah looks so happy Sam can’t help but beam.

This party will be a blast.

* * *

She feels like her soul was torn apart.

Her friend,  _her very best friend_ , her leader- gone,  _left_ , never to be seen. Because of  _other members of her pack_. Because she wasn’t  _fast enough_.

The full moon following Hannah’s disappearance, Sam doesn’t close the door. She runs, runs, across the campus, across the town, to the highest point devoid of people she can reach.

The full moons following Hannah’s disappearance, Sam howls her pain away.

**Author's Note:**

> the tumblr's versegm folks, leave a review in passing!


End file.
